Upper Floor Word Composition

Isabella Hutchinson, 2024

Digital text, digital paper, word collage
A response to Upper Floor Composition, Yona Lee.

 
 

‘One writes in order to be loved.’ —Roland Barthes

I am going to be brave for once and assert something. I assert that every piece of art is an act of love. Art is a reaching out through time and space to an unknowable viewer. I write this essay—which is also art—to create my most real work yet.

Home is where the heart is. Hostile architecture springs from my city in sharp turrets. Under bridges are spikes that would kill Mario. Is this progress?

Entering your gallery space—Buxton Contemporary, I can feel a history.

Modernity inhabiting the dated.  

You invite me to touch.

The water is warm.

I could tell you had an affinity for music before I even knew your name.

The pitter patter of the shower, each head at different heights.  

It’s lulling me.

Taking everything down a notch.

I sit in the chairs with Mimi. 

We giggle at the warm light emanating from the lamp, far too close to the table.

The rejection of function, the warmth too low to bathe in. 

But it reaches Mimi’s cheeks.

The bed is suspended above us. 

Industrial pipes like monkey bars.  

I could climb up there, but I don’t think the gallery staff would like that. 

I’m too entrenched in social norms to ask, let alone try.

I’m sure you’re not surprised.

*


What might it mean to love someone we don’t know and never will? Lee created this space for people she will never meet. She doesn’t know that I was there. An impenetrable and yet tenuous connection. The fact I’m even writing about it is a series of coincidences. If I hadn’t had such shifts in my personal life, who knows if I would’ve connected with the work at all. You prepped me for it the morning before I got there, when you [ooooooooooooo.    oooo]. Like Rita Felski¹ spoke about, I was attuned, through my series of contexts and subjectivities. I was grateful. The warmth from you […………….                                            …] followed me to the gallery.

‘Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. In solitude, we find the place where we can truly look at ourselves and shed the false self. Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.’ (bell hooks, All About Love)


When I stepped into the installation I knew I wanted to take you there, but doubted I ever would. Just being [oooooooooo.]. You’re out of reach, like the metal bars and the bed. I can touch some but not all. I’m ‘feral with vulnerability’ as Nelson proclaimed. I won’t tell you how I feel; I’ll just give you my sticky tabbed, scribbled copy. I told you I didn’t think you’d get the artwork. You were offended, saying I didn’t know anything about your capacity to get art. I said I wasn’t sure that there was anything to get. It’s my way of rejecting you first, holding you at arms length for once.


*

What if the you I was writing to all along was a stranger? What if the you I was writing to was me? What if the you I was writing to I’ll never meet? What if it’s you?


But any time you feel the pain, hey Jude refrain, don’t carry the world up on your shoulders.²

*

Art as a medium allows the artist to influence those they will never meet. Lee, you got under my skin. I asked a thousand questions, all the while feeling like you loved me. You made this place for my friends and I to explore. One snapping pictures of us, which I look back on in my bedroom when it’s 6am and I’m not ready to brave another 16 hour day. The orange lamp light penetrating the back of my eyes. I inhabited your space for a bit and now that place is within my memory to explore for as long as I feed it. The power of the artist, to keep me at arm’s length, always in the next room, always giving it meaning.


‘And the world of domination is always a world without love.’³ I’m not a real artist, I’m more like a bottom feeder, taking in experiences and stories of interesting people to write about. You know I’ll do it for the plot.

 

*

Of course you’re a writer.

I breathe the wet air in and make it wetter on my exhale. I think of beds I’ve been in alone, where the loneliness ate at me from the inside out. Loneliness like hunger.

*

I stole our love for Ikea from 500 days of Summer. Forgive me for being unoriginal. I watched it the day after we broke up and couldn’t cry. It didn’t feel worthy of it, like it was all a waste of time. I haven’t ventured much into trying to relax or do the things I love. I’ve been so focused on being the better me, the me I’m supposed to be without knowing what that means. Now I’ll admit that I miss you, even though mentally you weren’t really there at the end. I’m sorry I hurt you.  

‘It often happens that we treat pain as if it were the only real thing, or at least the most real thing: when it comes round, everything before it, around it, and, perhaps, in front of it, tends to seem fleeting, delusional… Schopenhauer is the most hilarious and direct spokesperson for this idea: “As a rule we find pleasure much less pleasurable, pain much more painful than we expected.”’ (Maggie Nelson, Bluets, 2009: 87)


I am going to ask you this question one more time,
one I have stolen from so many, the ancients included.
Is it better to speak or die?

What if we could just be silent and let the water wash over us for a bit. This space is here for you to exist in, why must you do one or the other?

*


I arrive now at the intersection between love and expectations. There is so much discourse around death of the artist,⁴ post-structualist readings that reject authorial intent. But we all love artists, we find artists we connect with, like me and you. Standing in ***your*** installation, I knew you were a musician. I felt a hand extended across to me to soothe, to prod. The water pitters and patters. What I’m getting at is that I want to strip down to my bare skin and feel the water droplets on my belly. I want to feel the cold porcelain of the tub against my back, I want to swing on the metal pipes like industrial monkey bars. I want to fit ***your*** entire personhood in my mouth. I want to tell you how I feel. I want to define you in a sentence and not be doomed to be wrong. I want you to be flat and something I can chew up and swallow, to know your muchness like the back of my hand, now wet with shower droplets. These hands that I stare at and ask if they are really mine. Is this a dream? I’m drifting away, spaced out and into another plane of existence. That’s what ***you*** think; that I’m somewhere else. But I’m not really here. There’s nothing to me, no mystery to hold away at arm’s length. I’ve laid myself bare in your bathtub. What else do you expect? Will you endeavour into loving me yet? I don’t have a musical brain myself, that I envy ***you*** for.

What do I want from ***you*** — it’s obvious I want something that I am struggling to find within myself. Is it even about ***you*** anyway? I’m trying bell, but it’s not really working; I’m still lonely. I hardly remember the pleasure. And this pain is so heavy.  

There’s not much else left to do, I guess. One writes in order to be loved. Though I’m not sure I agree, I think it’s time to start doing instead of sitting here waiting to receive. One writes in order to love.

Fuck time, love rules.

 
 
 

Isabella Hutchinson is a Naarm based multidisciplinary artist and writer. They write primarily nonfiction and poetry, drawing from their experiences with queerness, disability and trauma. Their work explores themes of love, loneliness and growing up, grounded in their research and real-life experiences. Hutchinson is interested in spiritual and creative expression to address the complexities of modern life. They believe in the power of storytelling to create social change.